


In the Heat of the Summer

by cheese_danish



Category: SKAM (Netherlands)
Genre: American AU, Camp Counselor AU, Fluff, because we are all sad, fanfic to cope, future installments will probably involve minor drug use but nothing else of particular note, i am sad it was cancelled, i don't have the research skills to set this in the netherlands but, i will never forgive them, will have more characters just not in this chapter, will update the tags if anything comes up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-01-23 08:48:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21317410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheese_danish/pseuds/cheese_danish
Summary: Liv takes a summer job as a camp art counselor at the insistence of Isa, who drags all the rest of their friends in the Vermont wilderness as well. Liv is all set for an uneventful if friend-filled summer when Noah shows up and claims to be the other art counselor. Engel immediately develops a crush on him, and the whole camp seems eager to work with him, everyone except Liv, the only person who has to.
Relationships: Noah Boom/Liv Reijners
Kudos: 7





	1. The Beginning

Liv set down the box. It was the last of the art supplies she had to bring in, but they still needed to be unpacked. She sighed heavily. If it was just her running the art activities, it would be a very long summer. She began to wonder why the hell she’d taken the job in the first place.

When Isa had sat her down and told her about the opening at her summer camp, Liv had thought that she meant a day camp. In Brooklyn. In contrast, Camp Clearwater was (according to their website) “a sleepaway camp located in the scenic Vermont hills dedicated to providing children with the best summer of their lives.” And it was too deep in the wilderness to have Wi-Fi or even cell service. The money wasn’t even that good, although what she had expected, Liv didn’t know. Still, she couldn’t help feeling as though she had been tricked. Well, she supposed, at least she would be with her friends.

Almost as if they had heard her, her radio crackled to life.

“Liv! Are you done unpacking yet?” Isa said, her voice partially obscured by the static quality of the radio.

Liv picked up the radio and put it to her lips. “No, not yet. Just got everything from the main house across the field.” She looked across the football-sized lawn to the main house, which housed the dining room and kitchen, and was currently filled to the brim with all the boxes of supplies for the coming summer.

“Well we’re all done on the waterfront. I’m getting lunch, you want me to bring you some?”

“Yeah sure.” Liv responded, and clipped the radio back onto her belt. As soon as she had, more voices came onto the frequency.

“Get me some lunch too, Isa.” It was Janna, Liv thought, although how she was able to tell she didn’t really know.

“I second that!” Imaan said.

“Okay, okay. I’ll be right—” Liv pushed the mute button. Peace and quiet.

The art cabin was small, but cozy, with wooden rafters stretched across the ceiling and huge mesh windows lining the walls. One long workbench ran along the end facing the lawn, and cabinets bare of art supplies lay on either end of the wall facing the woods. Three tables crowded the space in the middle, with each having two plain benches to sit on. It was beautiful, if a little boring in the decor. That could be subject to change, Liv mused.

The boxes Liv needed to unpack were sitting on the tables, full of paints, brushes, pencils, markers— everything anyone would ever need to make art. Or at least anything a bunch of kids would ever need. She began to load everything into the cabinets and onto the workbench, trying to organize the supplies in a somewhat organized fashion, although she knew that in a few days time the kids would end up wrecking the place anyway. She’d just unpacked the third box, and was beginning to think about what she would do to the place if she had the chance, when the mesh door swung open.

“Oh hey Isa—” Liv stopped short. It wasn’t Isa who’d walked through the door, but someone she had never seen before in her life. He was about her height, tan, with black hair was somehow amazing without even looking like it had been combed. He was wearing his own spin on the camp uniform of green shirt and khaki pants, a spin which apparently included wearing something else altogether. He’d accessorized the whole ensemble with a pair of black sunglasses pushed into his hair, a purple crayon behind his ear, and the cockiest grin Liv had ever seen in her life. He was, to put it simply, dreamy.

Liv hated him instantly.

“Hey,” he said. God, he was more annoying when he spoke. Liv had to look away. “I’m Noah.”

“Do you work here?” Liv asked, because the lack of uniform was making her unsure. Then again, why would anyone choose to be there if they weren’t being paid for it?

“I’m the head of art,” he said, stepping further into the cabin and letting the door swing shut behind him. He leaned on the workbench near the door.

Liv had to laugh at that. “Like, all art everywhere? Or here?”

“Here.” He didn’t miss a beat before asking, “What’s your name?”

“I think you’ve got it wrong. I’m the head of art.” She purposefully didn’t answer his question. She had a nametag, if he wanted to read it, he could.

“Yeah, we both are.” He stretched his arm out for a handshake. “I’m Noah, by the way.”

“You’re—” She sputtered. “There’s only one head of art!” That’s what they’d told her. It was her first time working at the camp, but Isa said she’d be the only one doing art. That’s why she’d agreed to do it. Well, that and the money. She needed a job if she wanted to buy an apartment in the fall, and she hadn’t been able to find any in the city. But here came this stupidly handsome, weirdly infuriating guy saying she would in fact, need to share the job with someone else? Fuck.

“Not anymore.” He smiled at her. Liv couldn’t put her finger on it, but that smile had something so infuriatingly irritating about it. “Can I help?” he asked, gesturing to the boxes. It was irritating even when he was being helpful.

“I don’t really need any—” she began, but realized it would sound pretty stupid to refuse his help now. They would clearly have to work together. Besides, the only concrete thing she had to hate about him was the way he looked. And acted. Maybe it would be hard to work together. But, she figured, she would never know if she refused help at every turn. It was a useless line of thinking anyway, since Noah had already begun unpacking another box.

“You got my…” Liv trailed off, gesturing to the cabinets, and the system she’d been using to organize things. He seemed to have picked up on it.

“Yeah it’s not hard. It’s just. Taking things out of the box and putting them with similar things.” He stared at her. Right. She was being dumb. Of course he knew how to unpack a box. She turned away.

With every moment they passed in silence, Liv got more and more used to the idea of working with Noah. Sure, he looked like the type of guy who’d mansplain a period, or something, but Liv figured she couldn’t really hold that against him unless he actually did. And he did have a bit of a ‘the rules don’t apply to me’ kind of vibe to him, which, Liv did admit, could have been a bit hot under better circumstances. Plus, he had gotten the hang of her organizing system pretty quickly, which boded well for the cleanliness of the arts cabin in general. So in short, it could have been worse.

The door slammed open again, interrupting Liv’s thoughts and causing Noah to drop the markers he’d been putting away into a bin abruptly and turn around. Janna, Engel, Imaan, and Isa burst into the cabin, bearing plastic plates from the dining room loaded with all the sandwiches and uncooked vegetables the kitchen saw fit to prepare for the counselors. They had been talking loudly, but stopped short when they saw that Liv wasn’t alone. It was Isa who spoke first.

“Oh hi, Noah,” she said. Everyone seemed shocked that they knew each other, but then again, none of them had ever worked there before save for Isa, so none of them would know who she knew at the camp.

“Hi, Isa.” His tone was cheerful, but less… involved than it had been when he was talking to Liv. Weird. As if sensing that she was thinking about him, Noah turned back to her and said, “I’ll be back then, Liv? I look forward to unpacking more boxes with you.”

She crossed her arms in surprise. So he had read her nametag. Liv chose to lean against the cabinet where she had been unloading boxes and not dignify him with a response.

As Noah made his way out the door and started across the lawn, Engel broke out of her semi-trance and waved after him. “Bye!”

All the girls turned back to Liv when they were finished watching Noah walk out.

“Who was that?” Engel asked, eagerly. Liv had a bad feeling about the look on her face. It was the look she always had before she got her heart broken.

“How should I know? Ask Isa.” Liv shrugged and pointed to her friend, who stopped chewing her sandwich and raised her hands in innocence.

“We were campers together! He comes every year!” Isa put down her plate. “I don’t know a lot about him, since we never really hung out as campers. Or even last year, really. He’s older. By like… 2 years? Could be. Anyway, he always does art but I thought he wouldn’t be here this year.” She shot an apologetic look at Liv. “Sorry, I really didn’t know. I guess they gave him a position anyway. Go figure, his mom’s the camp director.”

Liv could hardly process it all before Janna asked, “Why did you think he wouldn’t come back?” The girls had all sat down by now, and were eating their lunches in utter fixation over Isa’s story. Liv smiled. They were such gossips, it was funny sometimes. She caught Imaan’s eye and they smiled at each other, mostly over Isa deciding to lean in conspiratorially as she continued, as if she were revealing government secrets and not idle gossip.

“Well, apparently, his sister got really sick and his older brother went like, crazy or something.”

“What?” Liv moved closer at that.

Isa nodded sagely. “Yeah, it was fucked up. His sister was in the hospital I think? And, well, all I really know is that he left in the middle of the first session and Olivia had to fill in. She hated it! He left… oh God I remember now! It was the 4th of July, and I remember because…”

Liv stopped hearing what Isa was saying. A bad boy with a tragic backstory. It was all starting to sound like a soap opera. God, it would be a long summer.


	2. The Cabin in the Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liv gets back to her cabin, and has an unexpected surprise.

It was hours before Liv went back to her cabin or the art house. After the girls had come to bring her lunch, she had finished unpacking the last few boxes and gone to the main house for “bonding exercises.” They were torturously boring, but after they were over Liv got to sit in the main hall with the girls and talk more about their days and their assignments, Everyone had gotten rule books and a few lectures about various tactics for de-escalation and how to talk to young children, but after that there was very little for anyone to do but sit around until the kids arrived in the morning, assuming they had set up their area already. Of course, Liv still had to go back to her cabin, which was attached to the art house in the back, and unpack. She had peeked in before unloading the boxes to drop her bags off, and it had looked so full of cobwebs and dust that she had decided to tackle the entire issue later. Now, facing the idea of getting back to her cabin at almost eleven at night, she was regretting that decision.

The girls all left the main house together, but no one else’s cabin was out near the art house, which was all the way across the sports field. Nothing was out there except the art room and attached cabin and a small outhouse. Suddenly the camp felt vast and empty, save for her and her tiny lantern. It seemed like the light it cast got dimmer by the second, and the field around her grew less and less predictable. She had decided before arriving that she wouldn’t let the fact that she had only ever lived in the city hinder her in any way, but she had forgotten about the dark. The ever-encroaching dark. In the city the street lamps and the neon signs and the traffic lights held it off, but here there was nothing. She was all alone in the wilderness.

Just as Liv thought she could see the cabin up ahead in front of her, she heard a twig snap behind her. She whipped around and held the lamp in front of her face. She could feel the shadow more than she could see it.

“Who’s there?” She called out, more frightened that it would be a coyote than that it would be someone. A person, at least, she was confident she could reason with. Then the shadow stepped into her view, and she lost that confidence.

It was Noah. Liv, in her head, cursed herself for ever turning around.

“Why are you shining that in my face?” He asked her, shielding his eyes. He wore the same clothes as earlier, only he had a very much not camp-sanctioned joint tucked behind his ear instead of a crayon.

“Why were you following me?” She countered, lowering her lamp slightly.

“I wasn’t following you, I was going to my cabin.”

“There are no cabins here except for mine.”

“Actually, it’s my cabin too. Art counselors sleep in the same cabin.”

“They do?” Liv said, unabashedly outraged. It was her cabin! She was there first! God, she was starting to sound like a child. Why did he make her so irrationally infuriated? It wasn’t like he had done anything wrong. But she did get the feeling that if he had done something wrong, he really wouldn’t be sorry for it.

“Listen, I’m sorry you didn’t know you wouldn’t be the only person working on art, but I’m here and we have to work together and live together because in case you haven’t noticed, there are no more cabins and I don’t want to sleep outside with the mosquitos. So.” He punctuated his declaration by turning away fro her and starting to walk to the cabin entrance.

“Hang on,” Liv called out. “I have the light, you might trip over something.” She took a few steps forward to meet him, holding her lantern out in front of her.

“Your lantern’s actually only making it worse.”

“What?”

“We’re in the middle of a field. You can see everything if you let your eyes adjust.”

“No you cannot.”

He reached out and turned off her lantern. For a few seconds the whole world was blanketed by an unbearable, silent darkness. And then, like a fog, it slowly lifted.

“Look up,” Noah told her. She did, and she could see what she hadn’t even noticed before: all the stars in the sky were visible, if you just turned off your light. Liv had never really seen the galaxy before, only ever in pictures. The streetlamps were always on. She realized that the full moon cast an intensely bright glow over the entire field, now that her eyes adjusted. She wondered why she had ever needed the lantern. Nothing was strange or scary now, even the dark shadows by the edge of the field. She could see now that they were only trees, and the only movement was the breeze.

“Are you going to come inside? You’ll get bitten to death.”

Liv turned around. Noah had already gone in, leaving her standing outside, staring at the bright lights of the main house so far across the field.

“Right! Right.” She went inside the small cabin and was reminded that the light of the moon didn’t extend indoors, so she turned on her lantern once more. The cabin was small, just big enough for two beds and two small shelves, each bed on a different side of the room. The door and a few windows were made of bug screen, so the night breeze blew in from one end and right out the other without stopping for breath. What was surprising about it was that Noah had clearly cleaned the place since she arrived. There was no longer dust everywhere, and she didn’t see one spider. He’d unpacked his whole side of the room, made his bed and put all his books and things on the shelves. His clothes were neatly folded on the top of the shelf, and the lower levels were piled high with art supplies. Maybe this is what he had been doing while the rest of them were playing get to know you games in the hall. It certainly seemed more useful.

“I was going to make your bed but I thought that might have been weird,” Noah said as he sat down on the bed and pulled his shoes off.

“Yeah, that would have been weird.” Liv hooked her lantern onto a ceiling beam and pulled one of her bags over to the bed so she could find some sheets. “But I probably would have thanked you now.”

“Here.” Noah walked across the room and took two corners of her sheet in his hands, bringing it over the bed and tucking the corners under the mattress with her. He grabbed a pillow from her bag and threw it at one end as she took out a folded quilt and threw it over the bed. Noah watched this with amusement.

“What?” Liv asked, when she looked up and noticed his expression.

“You’re going to be cold.

“What are you talking about? I have a quilt, I’ll be fine.”

“You’ve never had a Vermont summer. It gets cold in the nighttime. It’s all the mountains and the lakes.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Alright! I’m going to bed then. If you’re sure you don’t need a sweater or my extra blanket,” Noah said, turning.

“No. I’m going to get changed now, so turn around.”

“Ditto.”

As Liv pulled her pajama shirt and pants on, she became acutely aware of Noah’s presence in the room. She realized she didn’t really know anything about him, or any more than Isa had said earlier. It bothered her to be sharing a room with someone she hadn’t even really met. Maybe those get-to-know-you games had some purpose after all.

“You’re from New York, aren’t you?” He asked quietly, when they were both done changing and had sat down in their beds, him nestled under a few covers and her under her quilt.

“The city, yeah,” she replied, shifting in her bed. The breeze was getting pretty cold, but she didn’t want to admit it. Noah looked very warm. “Where are you from?”

“Here.”

“Right, but where?”

“Thetford,” he said. He looked at her for a moment before asking, “Why are you here?”

“You first,” She responded.

“I went here. I like it here. Obligation.”

“And I guess it doesn’t hurt that your mom runs it.”

“Not really a factor for me. You next.”

Liv sighed as she stared up at the ceiling. “I needed a job. I want to get an apartment someday. And some of my friends already worked here.”

“Do you go to school in New York?”

Liv nodded. “Columbia. And I grew up in Brooklyn.”

“Never left home, then.”

“This is pretty much it.”

“No wonder you’re such a city slicker then. Afraid of the dark.”

“I’m turning off the light. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

As Liv reached up to turn off the light, she caught a glimpse of her roommate’s eyes before darkness settled on them both. Liv fell asleep thinking about those eyes. Those eyes, she thought, those eyes were deadly. They could kill. And she was determined not to fall prey.

**Author's Note:**

> lmk what you guys think! sorry it's so short i promise more will come i just wrote it so long ago i forgot to finish and also it's good to keep people on their toes right? i am,,, very sad about this and felt the need to post something i wrote in happier times. i'll probably finish it someday but i'll expedite it if that is the will of the people.  
the title is taken from The Heat of the Summer by Young the Giant!


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